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So much for the expected bounce-back.

French manufacturing output declined again in January, new data from the country’s stats office show, with a 1 per cent decline on the month building on a fall of the same scale in December and disappointing economists’ expectations of a rise of 0.5 per cent.

On a year-on-year basis, production fell by 1.3 per cent, from a (downwardly revised) increase of 0.1 per cent observed in December. Again, the result was far shy of forecasts by economists polled by Bloomberg.

On the slightly brighter side, overall industrial production saw a more modest decline on the month, shrinking by 0.3 per cent from a 1.1 per cent drop in December.